Live as a free man and make f-you money an absolute in your life. Whether you are an employee or business owner, consider your hair on fire until you have one year’s living expenses cash in the bank. Rise above the daily necessity to trade your time for money and live each day with a new sense of freedom and the pride of self-determination.
Think about it for a moment. How long would your savings last if you lost your job tomorrow? As a business owner or self-employed professional, how long would you survive if you lost your top client? Or what kind of financial hole would you dig for yourself if you went an extended period of time without a salary?
Discover the peace of mind that will accompany the hard fact that you could go a full year without earning a single dollar and still pay your bills and eat your fill every day. If you have dependents that rely on your income for survival, then double your standing and consider yourself a superior man of foresight and intelligent preparedness.
This is standing tall and this is living as a man should; for you are now no longer a slave to your employer or business, but a free man fully in charge of his life. You are now a man with options. And a man with options lives on a higher plane.
Rise each morning with the energy and confidence that comes from a strong measure of financial security. Handle the day’s challenges at work with composure and calm. Endure your superiors with a new resilience. Comport yourself with the coolness of outcome independence. And then continue your steady march toward the eventual goal of true financial independence.
You will begin with the enviable position of being able to say f-you to your employer if you ever needed to and then continue the process toward never having to work for pay again.
The Numerator—One Year’s Living Expenses
A man must know where he spends his money and what his bare bone expenses would be to survive for a full year. This is the starting point for f-you money.
Go fully electronic and track your expenses. Use an application such as Quicken, Mint.com or YouNeedABudget.com to download every expense for the last 12 months from your bank account and credit cards. Each expenditure will be categorized and will then allow for a realistic look at where your money was spent by category. If you withdrew and spent cash, create an expense category called “cash” and then track that as well.
From here you can take the time to create a lean, but survivable budget for a full year without pay. This is not how you spend your money right now, but as you would with zero income.
And there you have it, your target one year f-you number. This number will also serve as the numerator in your gold plated formula for true financial independence.
Set your woman straight
Go Minimalist
Execute the blockbuster trade of your life right now. Trade the typical superficial and material Western existence for a life of freedom by embracing minimalism. Take whatever flak you need to, but set your woman straight pull the trigger and get started. When you come out on the other side it will all be worth it.
In the end it is ultimately your responsibility, your health and your well-being on the line. And a man will always benefit those he cares about the most by taking proper care of himself. In today’s world this definitely includes developing a deliberate financial framework and accruing the intangible benefits from doing so.
Adjust your financial overhead and lifestyle so that you cash flow every month. Restructure your life so that you can live off of 50% of your salary or a single income in a two income household. Build your f-you savings as fast as you can.
Eventually with your f-you money in hand and a path to financial independence set in stone, there will never be any regret. Even your woman will realize the same.
Plant the seed of freedom
Get A Side Hustle
If going minimalist doesn’t get you to where you need to go fast enough, then get a side hustle. Plant the seed of freedom in your mind and you will find a way. You can do more.
A man with the proper motivation has immense inherent capacity. Find your motivation and your purpose. Know deep down why being truly free matters to you and you will find the energy and time to add the necessary incremental income.
Become fed up with living as a slave to your wages. There is no reason to live as such in modern western society. Despite the constant encroachment of government we still live with immense opportunity and tremendous freedom of choice compared to all of history. Why not add some incremental effort and eventually live as a truly free man?
If you are already tired after work then think of it this way: you might as well get paid for it. What are you going to miss, a few television shows? Eat right, lose some weight and quit drinking. You will develop the endurance and make it a way of life. Find something that interests you or perhaps even something simple and easy; whatever works.
If you are a man with a top notch work ethic and good character, eventually you will meet others of the same value system and the good paying work will find you.
Explain to your woman why a few nights a week or time away on the weekends is necessary. Fill her in on your plans and she will take pride in you as a man distinguishing himself and executing each day as the tip of the spear for his loved ones.
You will still have plenty of quality time for your woman and family. Quit lying on the couch, watching other men play sports and get to work.
Unburden your soul
Kill Your Debt
Once you have your one year of f-you money, put out the second fire in your hair and go all out to kill your consumer debt. Yes that is correct, f-you money first and then any balances you carry in revolving credit next. For me, it is survival first and then finesse second.
Since you’ve been able to save a year’s worth of living expenses, you can certainly continue and rid yourself of the life stealing nature of consumer debt. Get this done in a hurry; a mortgage, and perhaps a car payment for now, are acceptable. But if you are stuck in the cycle of minimum payments on credit, you are literally trading your life for what was a temporary material or fleeting gratification.
This is no life for a man. Make the commitment to pay off everything. You will unburden your soul, lower the magic number for a year of financial survival and then eventually add to your monthly cash flow.
And this gentlemen, is when the ride gets good. You are now on your way to financial independence and you now have the formula; it is a simple fractional formula and one for which you already have the numerator. Next up is the denominator for that formula.
Understand the 4% Rule
The Denominator—4%
The 4% denominator is a rule of thumb based on long term investment in the United States stock market, which will allow for a near certainty of 30 years of specified withdrawals adjusted for inflation without running out of funds.
Take your one year living expense figure (the numerator) and divide it by 4% (the denominator). Perhaps a simpler way to look at it is to multiply your yearly expense figure by 25. And this is your magic number for financial independence. These are the funds that you will need invested in an appropriate mix of stocks and bonds that you can draw from for the rest of your life.
For example, up here in western New York a man with no debt, no car payments and no mortgage can live pretty well off of $40,000 per year—especially if he is committed to a minimalist lifestyle. Plugging 40K into the elementary school math formulas above yields $1,000,000.
Is the 4% Rule a guarantee? Of course not, but then there is nothing to stop you from pushing beyond the target savings figure or supplementing your income if necessary. Bottom line is you now have a reasonable target to shoot for. And this is a goal that is attainable to every man who is gainfully employed over his lifetime. How quickly you get there depends on how hard you hit the throttle and pursue it.
Adjust your financial overhead and spending habits so that you can add to your net worth every month. Make every day at work meaningful beyond just getting by and make sure to cash flow for the rest of your life.
Live A Wise Man’s Life
Spend 96 seconds of your time to watch Mr. Collins above, in an adaptation from the movie The Gambler, essentially carve out the perfect plan for financial independence. Like the man says, a wise man’s life is based on f-you. Learn this essential lesson and live a life of financial control, freedom and prosperity.
Read More: 16 Ways To Save More Money
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